Data sovereignty is increasingly becoming a point of focus for EU regulators, and it’s something that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has addressed with the launch of new sovereign cloud regions for its customers in the region.
Oracle says private and public sector organizations across the EU will be able to use the new OCI sovereign cloud regions to host data and applications that are sensitive, regulated, or of strategic regional importance.
Though OCI claims it already does not move customer content from the regions that its customers select for their workloads, it says the new sovereign clouds extend this practice by restricting operations and customer support responsibilities to EU residents, which could help customers to demonstrate alignment with relevant EU regulations and guidance.
What’s the fine print?
Current users will be pleased to that know that pricing for OCI services will be the same as in existing OCI regions, and European Union Restricted Access (EURA) pricing will remain unchanged, with the same levels of support and financially backed service level agreements (SLAs).
Customers will also be able to use their existing hard-won Oracle Universal Credits to purchase services and participate in OCI programs, including Support Rewards.
Oracle says the first two sovereign cloud regions for the EU will be located in Germany and Spain, with operations and support restricted to EU residents and specific EU legal entities.
In addition, Oracle claimed that the sovereign cloud regions will be logically and physically separate from the existing public OCI regions in the EU, such as those already operating in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Marseille, Milan, and Stockholm.
“Having cloud services with data centers that are located in the EU, and operated, updated and supported by EU residents, while maintaining isolation from non-EU cloud regions is an important part of our cloud adoption,” said Jarkko Levasma, government chief information officer, director general ministry of finance of Finland.
He added: “This will open up possibilities to adopt infrastructure, platform and Software-as-a-service in Finland for the government.”
It’s not just Oracle that is looking to address data sovereignty issues in its product rollouts.
Google has announced a new set of tools for Google Workspace it says will provide new “digital sovereignty” capabilities for public and private organizations in the EU.
- Are the data sovereignty concerns of the public cloud giving you the shivers? Check out our guide to the best bare metal servers
